[Usenet, but may predate it] flame wars over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularised the terms big-endian and little-endian was entitled "On Holy WaRS and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy WaRS have included Emacs vs. vi, my peRSonal computer vs. everyone else' s peRSonal computer, ITS vs. Unix, Unix vs. VMS, BSD Unix vs. USG Unix, C vs. Pascal, C vs. Fortran, etc., ad nauseam. The characteristic that distinguishes holy waRS from normal technical disputes is that in a holy waRS most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off peRSonal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations. See also theology. [Jargon File]